


we said we'd only die of lonely secrets

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drowning, M/M, Recovery, Suicide Attempt, Vomiting, jack morrison takes a much needed vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-26 04:30:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: Something had to give, eventually.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big shoutout to the discord, and to [sciencefictioness]() and [crookedfingers]() in particular for cheering me on. Also, a lot of what ended up in this fic was hammered out with crook, so you have her to thank/blame.
> 
> Chapter-specific warning(s): immediate aftermath of a suicide attempt
> 
> (PS you're not crazy, I changed the title)

The only footage is a grainy composite of heat signatures and infrared, scraped from security’s backup two months after the fact.

Gabriel watches it so many times that he can reimagine it nearly frame-by-frame when he closes his eyes. The main cameras go dark at 01:14 via an override protocol submitted by one of the five people in the building with the authority to do so. The backup readings are an old failsafe, buried behind options and settings that no one has configured since the headquarters came online. They offer a misshapen sketch of the private sector aquatic center: a deep black rectangle in the center of the room, a few hazy white circles from the underground pool lights.

Sixteen minutes of footage roll by unchanging.

At 01:31 the door opens. A human-shaped haze walks into the room, slower than usual, carrying an oddly shaped object in both his arms. He stands at the edge of the pool for two minutes, not moving. It is impossible to see on the footage, shot from above and in low definition, where he is looking. Gabriel has tried.

At 01:34 he fastens the strange objects to his ankles. They whir to life; Gabriel knows this through use, even though it’s imperceptible on the footage. The magnetic anchors steadily grow heavier as the electric current inside them builds to a peak.

At 01:36, the man plunges into the water, orange and yellow heat swallowed up by the inky black.

Under the water he is almost imperceptible, but Gabriel knows. Gabriel knows. He has seen people trapped before. His arms flail; his legs kick; his body tries to bring him to the surface, again and again, while he’s held down by the weights he fastened on himself, while his lungs gulp in water in a desperate attempt for oxygen. He fights, and he fights the fighting, and it takes thirty-one minutes before the warm orange glow of his body finally begins to fade.

It turns yellow, then green, then blue. Then he’s gone.

*

Gabriel’s emergency pager is fucking _ loud_.

He grabs his phone off the nightstand to shut off the alarm before he even reads the message, just so the tone stops blaring through his ears. Once he’s sitting, he takes the effort of focusing his eyes on the morning’s latest crisis.

**[06:52] ANA: Jack found in the pool.**

The words roll through his body like an oncoming wave.

It’s not that he doesn’t understand them. He understands them almost instantly; feels his heart seize up and his body move on autopilot to get clothes on, get out the door. But they feel the way words feel in a dream; slippery and intangible, like if he reads them again they’ll be different. They cannot be saying what he knows they are saying because that is too impossible and he will wake up again. Try again.

He moves through the hallways without thinking, takes the stairs down, down, down, seven stories to the basement because it’s faster, through the locker rooms and the pungent smell of chlorine to the poolside where everything will be fine where--

The room is silent.

Not the silence that comes with calm. The silence after a bombing. After a war. After death.

Ana is leaning against the wall, her hands clutching her phone, her face ashen grey. A terrified kid Gabriel’s never seen before is sitting next to her, head against his knees, breathing heavy.

By the pool are six medical personnel. An array of equipment. Reinhardt, face set like stone. And Jack.

He’s so blue. He’s so blue. Lips and fingertips. Oxygen mask sealed over his mouth that they’re pumping every six seconds in time with compressions. Reinhardt, Gabriel realizes. He was the first one they could find who could break Jack’s ribs.

“Stop,” Gabriel says, but it gets caught in his throat. “_ Stop_,” he says again, and it comes out this time, cracked and broken.

Five of the medical staff turn to look at him. He wants to scrape off the look they give him--pity, fear, grief. No. No, no, no.

“Stop,” he says again, and he moves towards them now, and someone’s trying to say something to him but he’s talking over them, “Did you get the water from his lungs? Do you have an automatic oxygen supply?”

“Yes,” one of them says, “Commander, we’re doing everything we--”

He fixes them with a look he knows people respond to. This cold, dark stare that makes the person draw up short.

“Then stop,” Gabriel says carefully, and he puts a hand on Reinhardt’s shoulder, feels the man buckle under the touch and he can’t think about that, not now, “and get away from him.”

They don’t move. Nobody moves. Nobody’s _ listening_.

“I said, get the _fuck_ _away from him!_”

They freeze then, at least. And someone, someone with sense, gives them a look that they must understand and gestures for them to back away.

“Oxygen,” Gabriel says, and points. “You. Put the oxygen flow on him.”

The head of staff--someone Gabriel’s met before, he thinks, but he never remembers the name--hesitates. “Commander,” he says, in this horrifically gentle voice. “We’ve been doing everything we can. But he--”

“He’s _ not _ dead.”

The silence somehow expands.

“Commander, we can keep working on him if you’ll let us, but he hasn’t had a pulse since we pulled him--” but by the time he’s finishing his sentence Gabriel is already shaking his head, hands curled into fists--if they’d just fucking _ listen to him-- _

“He’s not dead,” Gabriel says again, as slowly as he can so that maybe they’ll get the fucking message this time. “Put the oxygen on him, and leave him the fuck alone.”

It takes another two agonizingly long minutes, but they secure the tank over Jack’s mouth and nose. They back away. Even Reinhardt, who’s looking at Gabriel with this face that’ll haunt his dreams.

Jack’s cold, when Gabriel kneels down next to him. Damp. His mouth is parted. God, he’s so blue. When Gabriel lifts an eyelid he sees nothing but burst spidery veins in the whites of Jack’s eyes.

He knows how Jack looks. He knows. He can feel the horrible stillness of his blood underneath his own hands. He can see the swelling setting in in his eyes and mouth. He can feel how cold, how still, how _ gone _ Jack feels.

But they don’t know. They don’t.

Jack’s head is lying on the hard, wet floor, so Gabriel pulls him into his lap to hold him there to wait.

(Later, Ana tells him what he was tuning out. That the medical staff called the time of death as soon as they backed away. That they asked Ana who to notify to speak to Gabriel so that they could move Jack’s body somewhere else. That they thought Gabriel had lost his fucking mind, that _ Ana _ had thought he had too, that they didn’t know who he might hurt when they finally had to break him out of it--)

He holds Jack in his arms on the floor by the pool for an hour and twelve minutes.

He talks to him--whispers his name, tells him it’ll be okay. Calls him _ Jackie _ , even though there’s other people around, because it makes him laugh. It always makes him laugh. And when he laughs he looks like something miraculous, with his head all tipped back and his hand over his stomach, leaning up against something like he’s gonna collapse just from the joy of it all; he looks like the sun, and what a stupid thing to think, but Gabriel still thinks it, every time.

He hears distantly Ana say, “McCree.”

And he has just enough time to think, _ fuck, no _\--and then Jack breathes.

The sound is like death rattle in reverse; a shaky inhale that wracks his body, and the entire room startles except Gabriel who moves with Jack as he shakes and breathes and breathes and _ breathes _, and then he’s vomiting clear water and Gabriel rips the mask off and he has him on his hands and knees and he’s saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Jack. You’re okay.”

Jack heaves and blinks and the color flows back into his face and he leans heavy against Gabriel’s body and he screams.

Raspy at first as the last of the water makes its way out of his lungs. Then louder. It builds. Like an avalanche. He screams and slams his palms into the floor into the floor, rhythmic, against every inhale, and Gabriel says, _ I know _ , and Jack shakes his head _ no, no, no _ , but Gabriel knows it’s not about him. 

Jack screams like a child and it echoes through the room until it turns into sobbing, ugly and raw. And he collapses.

Gabriel holds him up.

“Come on,” Gabriel says. They’re both covered in the water purged from Jack’s body. Jack won’t stop shaking. Can’t stop shaking. 

“Come on,” Gabriel says again. He lifts him to his feet; Jack goes, like a ragdoll. “Come on, it’s okay. Close your eyes.”

Jack closes his eyes.

Gabriel leads them past the people looking at them like Jack’s a ghost. Ana’s face already full of scrutiny, Reinhardt who’s shattered, McCree who looks so fucking young right then--they’re all for later, not now, not while Jack’s still gasping for lost air. Gabriel leads them up the hallway, to the elevator, six stories up to the infirmary.

To somewhere Jack can breathe again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warning(s): Jack spends the first portion of this chapter in an inpatient mental health unit.

“How’s Ana been doing?”

“I’m not talking to you about work, Jack.”

Well.

Jack worries at the worn edge of the table with his thumbnail. The bright white lacquer that covers the wood is several layers deep, but if he digs in hard enough, it dents and compresses just a little. “I didn’t ask about work,” he points out. “I asked about Ana.”

Gabriel scoffs. “But you wanted to hear about work.”

Jack shrugs. He glances off. He doesn’t ask again.

The hour a day that he sees Gabriel goes like this most of the time. The minutes pass in silence, the two of them seated at opposite sides of a table in a room where they seem to be alone but where they both know they are being watched at any moment. The silence is not uncomfortable but is heavy, thick with all the things they want to say but can’t, or could say but don’t want to.

It isn’t so different from Overwatch, really.

Except that they don’t talk about Overwatch. They don’t talk about work. They don’t talk about the facility Jack’s in or what brought him there. Jack asks questions like, _ how’s Ana doing? _ or _ any news I might be interested in? _ and Gabriel says _ I’m not talking about work _ and _ don’t worry, everything’s being handled_. _ You just focus on… this_.

“It’s three o’clock,” says a clear, pleasant voice over the telecom unit. “Visiting hours are ending now. Please say goodbye to your visitors.”

*

There are no mirrors or windows or television screens in the private rooms at the Centre. Instead, the cool white walls act as backdrops for the miniature projectors embedded in the ceiling, which show only a resident’s choice of: the current time and date; the schedule for the day, week, or length of treatment plan; or the meal options for the next 36 hours.

Five days in, Jack starts to feel a strange sense of disequilibrium from not seeing an image of himself for so long.

(He gets that all rules have to apply equally; he wouldn’t know how to react, really, if he got any sort of preferential treatment. But he’d mentioned to the therapist assigned to him after a day or two that he thought it was a little pointless to restrict him from glass, and clothes made of nylon, and shoelaces.

“I mean,” he’d said, fingers raking through his hair, “obviously none of that would work on me anyway, so.”

She’d just looked at him with eyes soft and warm and said, “Have you thought about this in depth before?”)

But overall, the facility is--bearable. Some rehabilitation center with high standards of privacy and patient confidentiality that Gabriel had found and told him he could go to, if he wanted, if he needed--and he’d looked at Jack with an expression Jack had only ever seen on him when pressing fingers into infantrymens’ wounds in the middle of bombed-out temples and Jack had said yes, okay, I think I might.

He slept through most of the five days he spent in the Overwatch medical bay, and when he wasn’t asleep the only people ever there were Gabriel or Angela or once, for a few minutes, Ana. They didn’t force him to talk. They sat next to him and held his hand and said _ I’m here _ when he startled awake from a dream about swallowing water.

(Reinhardt only came by at the end; he sent books with Torbjorn once, though. Jack had asked, _ is he doing alright? _ and Torbjorn had said, _ don’t you worry about him right now, you old fool_, in a way that meant _ no, not really_.)

As much as that treatment had made him run hot with shame, the prospect of an entire medical team--nurses, doctors, counselors, nutritionists, people he didn’t know, people he’d need to explain himself to--had made him almost sick, at first.

But the onboarding days were calm. They came to his room when the schedule told him they would. They called him _ John _ the first time they saw him, and after that, when he corrected them with an awkward smile like he was telling a joke they both knew, they called him _ Jack_. Only ever _ Jack_. 

He thought he knew what questions they’d ask. _ Why’d you do it? When did it start? Why you, of all people? _

Instead it was: _ how are you feeling? What can we do to make that better? What do you need, in this moment? _

The days, with a rotating schedule of therapy and psychiatry and planning and resting and no contact with the outside world, no way to see what the news cycle is like, no way to know who knows or what’s been done about it or whether he’ll have a position when he returns--

The days blur into weeks. The weeks stretch on: one, two, three.

It’s an hour flight from Zurich. Gabriel comes to visit him every day.

And then, one day, Gabriel comes to take him home.

*

Jack does fine--better than fine, he does _ great_\--on the morning of his first day back to the headquarters. Brushes his teeth, gets into his Strike Commander uniform, lets Gabriel trim his hair the way Gabriel thinks is best. Swallows down the handfull of pills he’s meant to take that he still thinks his body metabolizes too quickly to be of any use, but at least it makes his doctor happy. Gets in the passenger seat of the car. Sits straight up, eyes on the road, breathing steady. Only fidgeting with the loose threads on his jacket a little.

Then they round the corner to the parking garage and the statue looms high over their heads, and he feels his face blanch.

Gabriel reaches over almost immediately. The car slows to a crawl. “Hey,” he says, his hand on Jack’s forearm. “Hey. We can go home.”

Breathe. Center. It’s not you--it’s an image of you.

“No,” Jack says. “It’s fine. I want to see what Ana’s done to the place.”

Gabriel scoffs, but Jack knows he’s still glancing sidelong.

The car starts rolling again, in any case.

It’s like that all the way up to the office--fits and starts. Jack had known--had thought he’d known--that some things would feel different, seeing them now instead of before. But 12 years in this building compared to a month or so away. How much could have changed?

Just him, he figures.

But then even though the scanner at the door lights up green when it sees him, but it doesn’t take his passcode anymore and Gabriel has to punch it in for the both of them, send an override authorization to let Jack in the building, and _ I’ll make them send you your new one_, Gabriel says, like he’s pretending it’s not a big deal.

But then the looks people give him aren’t smiles and waves that always felt like fanfare in a way that made him uncomfortable; they’re gentle little smiles, bright eyes like they’re seeing someone they thought moved away, and hs face burns hot and he has the instinct to turn in towards Gabriel, to shut his eyes, to let Gabriel lead him away--. But he smiles back. Mirrors them. _ Thank you, happy to be back_.

But then Gabriel gets called away, something urgent, and his face morphs into a scowl but he says _ I’ll find you later _ and he goes, and Jack doesn’t know what he’s meant to do so he goes towards his office, just to see, even though he already knows the answer, and he’s let into the lobby room no problem but the scanner at the office door says Access Denied and that’s where Ana finds him, hiding in his own fucking waiting room, or hers now, he guesses.

“Jack,” she says, and his body moves on its own to hug her.

She rubs circles into his shoulder blades. “Jack,” she says again. “You stubborn son of a bitch.”

He laughs, even though it makes his ribs shake a little, and pulls her back to arm’s length. “What can I say,” he shrugs. “Wanted to get fired in person.”

Ana frowns at him and twists her mouth, that way he’s seen her do when Fareeha makes some clever comment to her that she can’t rebuke.

“Come on in,” Ana says gently. She scans her card at the door. Access Granted. “I’ll make tea.”

*

The meeting goes---

The meeting goes.

Petras is neutral as Petras ever is. He uses words like _ for the time being _ and _ would be best for all parties_. He thanks Jack for his many years of exemplary work. He tells Jack he is welcome and encouraged to continue attending press events.

Ana is in business mode, face steeled, hands folded. She nods when it’s appropriate.

Gabriel is silent. Jack gets the feeling anything he wants to say in response is something he’s already said, multiple times and loudly.

“Morrison,” Petras says, as they all stand up, and Jack turns back to him. “I’m glad you’re back here safe and sound.”

_ Thanks_, Jack tries to make himself say, _ me too_.

“Always a pleasure to serve,” he says instead, and follows Gabriel out the door.

“Asshole,” Gabriel says as soon as they’re far enough away that he has the plausible deniability of being out of earshot. “C’mon. I got most of it, but come see if there’s anything else you wanna take.”

Jack follows him down the hallways--towards Gabriel’s office, must be, and Jack doesn’t even want to try his keycard at that door, doesn’t know if he can handle seeing that one flash red in front of him.

“Take where?” Jack asks. He hasn’t been assigned a new office, yet. Doesn’t even know if he will be.

“Los Angeles,” Gabriel says, and Jack stops in his tracks.

Gabriel waits.

“What the fuck, Gabriel.”

“Oh, yeah,” Gabriel says, trying to hide the smug smile that’s creeping itself across his face. “Didn’t mention yet. We’re going on vacation tomorrow. Pack a bag.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warning(s): Suicidal ideation, & the fic earns its explicit warning.

The last time Jack found himself in Gabriel’s family home was after his father’s funeral.

His father died in June of ‘57 after a lifetime of heart problems, right on the cusp of when Overwatch as a strike team had just been dissolved and Overwatch as a peacekeeping organization was in its infancy. Gabriel had gotten two days off for John Morrison, Sr.’s funeral, but without an on-the-record reason for extended bereavement leave, he’d had to go right back to work.   


Jack had tried to do the same. Gabriel had bought him a plane ticket instead.   


“You’ve already been granted two weeks off,” Gabriel had told him. “Stay with my parents. Fucking relax. Let yourself…. you know.”

You know. Grieve. Cry. The things Jack knew he didn’t have time for. Forget all the duties of Strike Commander; Jack’s mother had died years before, when he was still in the Program, and now he had an estate to deal with, a farm to sell, a life to parcel out.   


But Gabriel had insisted.

When he’d gone he’d expected to stay for a day or two to appease the Reyeses; eat their home-cooked meals, sleep in their guest bedroom, watch sports with Gabriel’s father. Let them lay out their condolences on him.   


Two days turned into three, and three days turned into a week. There was no smothering condolences; no frustratingly gentle words. Just an open door and Gabriel’s childhood bedroom and the promise that when he wanted to go, they’d hug him goodbye.   


One day before the sun came up he’d been sitting in their kitchen with a cup of coffee cooling under his hands, staring at the original hardwood flooring in the kitchen that didn’t quite match the rest of their house renovation, and he’d thought,  _ Dad would like that _ , and then he’d started crying and couldn’t stop. Gabriel’s mother had come out to sit with him, her hand running up and down his spine, until the shaking subsided and he felt hollowed out but clean.   


After a week there was an emergency--there was always an emergency, then--and he’d left for Zurich. But they’d made good on their promise.   


“It’s good to have you back,” Gabriel’s mother says when they come over for dinner for the first time, the night after arriving.   


“It’s good to be back,” he says.

She punches him in the arm, probably as hard as she can manage.   


“Stop by for something other than death or taxes sometime,” she snaps at him, and Gabriel covers his face with his hands but Jack laughs all the way down to his stomach, like he hasn’t done in weeks.   


*

They visit Gabriel’s old haunts: dive bars, strange antique book stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. They walk around the city--mostly at night, when there’s fewer people around and fewer pictures being taken. Not that Jack minds, so much. It just slows down a walk.   


They spend their days in the apartment Gabriel has somehow set them up with: this breezy top-floor room in the heart of the city, all white paint and wood furnishings with plants lining the walls and floors like they’re living in a greenery. Jack refuses to ask how much it costs to rent this place, even for just a few weeks.   


(“How much time did you get off?” he asks Gabriel once, a few days in.

Gabriel shrugs and says, “Enough,” and Jack knows he should press but the skyline looks so beautiful here when the sun sets.)

Jack avoids the news. He avoids his work phone. Gabriel fields interview requests for him, and maybe one day he’ll say yes, but right now the thought of it opens up a maw inside his stomach that he doesn’t have the energy to face.   


After five days of farmers’ markets and moonlit city strolling and tending to the menagerie that was already set up when they arrived, Gabriel comes to bed restless.   


Jack knows what it looks like when his mind is turning, spiraling inward on itself until he’s caught in some scenario he’s resigned himself to, some solution to a problem he hasn’t even voiced yet. He watches Gabriel settle into the mattress, a hand spread out over Jack’s chest, pressing a thumb into the ribs he can feel under the skin.

Jack runs a hand through Gabriel’s hair. “You can ask.”

Gabriel stills for a second. He exhales. “I know it doesn’t work like that,” he says, defensive.   


“I know you know,” Jack assures him. “But you can still ask.”

The silence spreads throughout the room. Gabriel closes his eyes. His breathing slows. If Jack didn’t know him, he’d think he was sleeping.

But then, eyes still closed, fingers spread wide, he says, “Why’d you do it, Jackie.”

It’s like a fishhook in his chest, even though he knew it was coming.   


He wants so badly to have an answer for Gabriel. For himself. For the people who call him and write him and for Gabriel’s parents and for Ana and Reinhardt and Torbjorn and for Petras, even, if only it would make them understand.   


But what’s he supposed to say? That it was the stress? The job? That it was just some strange mental lapse, that he didn’t know what he was doing?

This thing has sat in his chest since he can remember. Grown and shrank and sometimes receded, almost, but it would come roaring back, always, always. When he was sixteen he wrapped his car around a tree and told his parents he was street racing. He didn’t know then, either.

The weight of the world, sure. It was easy to blame it on that. But that was just what fed it. It didn’t start there.

He doesn’t know if it ends there, either.

He puts his hand over Gabriel’s hand, spread out over his chest, and he whispers, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Gabriel breathes heavy through his nose. Jack counts the seconds, or at least he tries to. Somewhere around three hundred, he falls asleep.

*

When he wakes up it’s because Gabriel has dipped beneath the blankets, already mouthing up Jack’s sides with a sense of quiet urgency.   


“Good morning,” Jack says, and he rests his hand against Gabriel’s neck. A silent signal;  _ this is fine, keep going _ .

They’ve done this before, places where they had no time, places where it couldn’t wait. Where they had to wake up and be dressed and out the door in fifteen minutes and every second mattered, so one of them would initiate and the other person would say no, if they wanted to. They almost never wanted to.

It always felt like they were working on borrowed time, back then. It makes Jack’s stomach twist to know Gabriel’s still feeling that, even now.   


But he lays kisses up Jack’s hips and sides, pushing his shirt up to grab at him, working with efficiency down to his thighs. Jack lifts his hips to let Gabriel pull his boxers off; he’s not hard yet, but he’ll get there, the way Gabriel is moving. Teeth scraped over the insides of his thighs, hands holding onto Jack’s wrists like he’s trying to pin him down and keep him there.   


Gabriel sucks hickies into the spaces nobody but him gets to see. They’ll disappear in a moment, dissolve back into the skin right in front of their eyes. But Jack knows. Gabriel knows.   


When Jack is half-hard Gabriel takes him into his mouth, all the way to the base all in one go, and Jack moans involuntarily in the back of his throat. Gabriel laughs and Jack can  _ feel _ it, twists his hand in Gabriel’s hair and tries to pull him forward--

Gabriel lifts off his cock with a wet noise.   


“Don’t touch,” he says, and he waits until Jack puts his hands flat beside him on the bed before sinking back down.   


This--this is not the hurried movements of a quick fuck that he was falling into before. This is slow. This is deliberate. He runs his hands over Jack’s thighs and ass as he works at him with his tongue, and Jack lets himself get lost in the feeling of it all, tilts his head back and twists his hand in Gabriel’s hair.

God, when was the last time they had sex like this? Unhurried? Unbothered? Just because they wanted to, not because it was the only chance they’d get for the next two weeks or more?   


Jack bucks his hips into Gabriel’s mouth when he feels an orgasm building, but Gabriel holds his hips down and keeps his own pace, slow and teasing, pulls off just when Jack thinks he’s getting close--

“Fuck you.”

“Not today,” Gabriel laughs, and swallows Jack down again, all the way to the back of his  _ throat _ , and Jack gasps and comes so deep in Gabriel’s mouth he doesn’t even think he can taste it.   


After they’ve showered and brushed their teeth, Gabriel says, “Let’s go to this shitty park I used to feed birds at,” so they do. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warning(s): Suffocation (but in the past!)

The kid is staring at him.

He knows this before he actually sees them; some instinct honed over the years of getting used to being stared at. He scans the faces in the park until he finds them--a little girl maybe eight, nine years old who purposely looks away when he looks at her. Long black hair pulled back into tight braids, pink pastel dress with shorts underneath, bandaids across both her knees, little running shoes tight on her feet. Troublemaker, Jack thinks.

Then she looks back, and start cautiously wandering over.

Gabriel’s on alert now, back straightened up, arm stretched out over the back of the park bench. Trying to look casual, even as he’s assessing exits.

“It’s just a kid, Gabriel,” Jack mutters, before they’re in earshot.

“I know,” Gabriel says, still calculating.

There’s usually someone, when they come to this park. It’s been enough times now that Jack can tell Gabriel is getting antsy; wants to go somewhere else, start dodging the appearance of habituality. But--whatever. Jack likes the park. The other parks will be the same, eventually.

“Hi,” the kid says simply, when she walks up.

Jack falls easily into a smile. “Hello there.”

“Are you the Overwatch guy?”

Jack’s smile morphs genuine. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably.”

Gabriel chuckles next to him; relaxes, just a little.

Jack continues, “My name’s Jack. What’s your name?”

“Mel,” says Mel. “How come you’re not dressed up like normal?”

Briefly he wonders where the girl has seen him dressed up _ like normal_\--on a television screen? In photo releases? On a poster, strung up at her school?

“I’m on vacation,” Jack says simply.

“Oh,” Mel says, like it’s a disappointing answer. And then, “I saw online it said you had to go to the hospital for suicide.”

Instantly the tension floods back into Gabriel’s body. Spine straight, hands by his sides, jaw clenched so hard Jack can see it out of the corner of his eye--but Jack’s body barely reacts. He feels his heart stutter for a second, and his mouth go a little dry, but.

She looks so genuinely curious. No pity; no judgement. He doesn't know if she knows the weight of the words in her mouth, and he hopes she doesn't ever.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I had to go stay at the hospital for a little bit.”

“Oh,” she says, and rocks back and forth on her feet. “I had to go to the hospital one time because I broke my foot. Then I had to get crutches.”

Jack grins. Something warm spreads over his chest. “I bet that was hard to walk with.”

She nods, very solemnly. “Okay,” she says, “I gotta go now. Bye!”

Jack and Gabriel watch her go. Jack gives her a little wave. He exhales, and his ribs hurt a little bit with it, but it feels good. It feels good.

Gabriel mutters, as if it’s profanity, “_Kids._”

*

Twenty minutes into the car ride home, Jack realizes they’ve taken a detour.

“Hey,” he says, as the car slows down and pulls to the side. “What--”

When he looks over, Gabriel’s gripping the steering wheel so hard there’s gonna be finger impressions later.

“Gabriel,” Jack says. He reaches out; Gabriel jerks away like recoiling from a hot stove. He brings the car to a full stop on the backroads they’ve snaked into, and unbuckles his seatbelt at almost the same time.

“Gabriel,” Jack says again, louder, because now Gabriel’s tumbling out of the car, yanking the keys out of the ignition. He throws the door open and walks down the road and Jack’s scrambling to following him because he’s staggering, chest heaving, until he stops against a telephone pole.

The sun is almost gone below the horizon. Everything’s pink and orange and yellow. Jack feels like his heart is going to burst out of his chest.

“What the fuck,” he yells after Gabriel, and Gabriel finally spins around.

“What the _ fuck_,” Gabriel parrots back, and Jack freezes. His eyes are shining with frustrated tears. “You--some kid gets to just walk up and ask you that? Like it’s anybody’s fucking business?”

“She was a _ little kid_, Gabriel, she was _ curious_\--”

He shakes his head, won’t look Jack in the eye. “It’s not about her, you know it’s not. It’s--all that shit you went through, weeks of being in the hospital, and I _ saw _ how much that took out of you, don’t try to tell me it didn’t. And anybody, _ anybody_, can just walk up and talk to you about it like it’s nothing, and you--I mean, do you--”

He stops. Knits his fingers behind his head and paces, screws his jaw shut. Jack’s staring at him, a lump in his chest.

He knows what Gabriel wants to say. He knows what _ he’d _ want to ask, if it was him, as selfish and nonsensical as he knows it is.

_ Do you even care? _

Jack feels his chest start to tighten. He crosses his arms and digs at the dirt at the side of the road with his shoe, watching Gabriel pace out of the corner of his eye.

“Do you know,” Gabriel says instead, “how long you were under there.”

Jack’s next breath catches on the way into his lungs.

“No,” he says, or mouths. He’s tried not to think about it. He’s tried not to think about anything about that day in precise terms--which isn’t what he’s supposed to be doing, he’s been told, he’s supposed to be facing it, but it burns so bright and heavy in his mind that it pains him, just to look.

Gabriel leans back against the telephone pole. The look he gives Jack is a haunted sort of emptiness.

“Five hours,” he says. “They didn’t find you for five hours.”

Jack blinks.

He shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “That’s not possible.”

And Gabriel, with tears in the corners of his eyes, smiles.

“We’re not possible, Jack,” he says. “You have to know that by now.”

*

Some old failsafe mechanism, buried deep.

It was summertime, 2054.

The compound Gabriel was sent to liberate was already on fire when they arrived, but he’d gone in to look for survivors. He’d heard wailing on the floors above him, so he’d climbed over ash and collapsed debris to spiral his way up the building, following the sounds, told himself it would be in and out and if it got too dangerous, he would call for backup.

But the wind changed suddenly, and the windows had blown out long ago. The fire swelled. Support beams shattered under their own weight. Smoke rose to the top, a thick blanket that smothered floor by floor.

He remembers thinking, _ what a stupid fucking way to die_, and then his throat swelled shut.

It was an hour before the fire was under control enough to extract him. His team tried to get him back for twenty minutes after that, even without a pulse.

They were talking about who was going to radio Commander Morrison to tell him about it when Gabriel sputtered back to life.

His head hurt for a week afterwards; his body was exhausted; every piece of him felt worn out, renewed. He still tasted smoke in the back of his mouth for months.

He never told Jack.

*

He tells him now.

They get back in the car, and Gabriel tells him everything as they make their way home. The video. The message from Ana. The way their bodies preserve themselves, slow down somehow. Some Program experiment they were never told about, like most of them.

When they get home everything’s quiet. They don’t bother to turn on the lights as they find their way to bed, under the covers.

Jack tries to quiet the churning in his mind on his own for an hour before he turns to Gabriel in the dark. 

“How did you know?” he whispers.

Gabriel opens his eyes. “How did I know what,” he says. Like he already knows the answer.

Jack swallows. There’s glass in his throat. “That I’d come back.”

They were never exactly the same, after all. Gabriel had raw strength where Jack had speed. Jack’s aim was always better. Gabriel’s mind worked like a machine. Nothing was universal, with them. Nothing predictable.

In the dark, Gabriel stares at him, eyes tracing out the contours of his face.

“I didn’t,” he admits. “But you had to.”

*

It’s another week and a half before Jack realizes.

He doesn’t know what tips him off--he’s drinking coffee, and watching Gabriel answer emails on a tablet, and there’s the quiet of the apartment all around them and the sunrise of the city outside and he suddenly says, “You’re not going back, are you?”

Gabriel raises his head slowly. He blinks.

For a split second, it almost looks like he’s going to lie.

Then he says, “No.”

Jack sits beside him, head racing with a hundred questions, When did this happen? How did this happen? Did you even think to ask me? Why didn’t I notice? Was this always the plan, from the second we got on that plane?

Instead, all he can say is, “Who?”

Gabriel says, “Who do you think?”

Jack stares.

“Jesus _ Christ_,” he says. “You left _ McCree _ in charge of Blackwatch?”

Gabriel’s laughter fills the room, and Jack buries his head in his hands.

*

He calls them both later that day--Ana first, then Jesse.

They knew before he knew--they knew as soon as Gabriel put in leave, they said--and maybe he should feel embarrassed about that. But he can’t find it within himself, anymore.

He can’t find a lot of things within himself these days--the embarrassment. The guilt. The shame. It still lurks there under his skin, and he thinks it always might. But it’s not drilled down to the core of him.

He and Gabriel both have been gone for three weeks and the world kept turning. It makes him feel distantly confused, some days, why he thought he needed to drown that all at the bottom of a pool.

Ana tells him things are going well. She tells him people keep telling her she’s _ flourishing _ in the new role, in a tone of voice like you might say _ disgusting _ or _ moist_. He laughs, and she tells him it’s good to hear him laugh.

“I’m thankful,” he says. “To--to you. And Gabriel. And everyone.”

“We’re thankful to have you, Jack,” she tells him, with such earnesty it aches. “But you know that if you need a break, or you need us to tell you that, you don’t have to go to those lengths again, right?”

He knows, he says. It’s hard. But he knows.

“Look out for yourself,” says Strike Commander Amari, and he promises he will.

The call with Jesse is shorter. More stilted.

Officially, he’s not Blackwatch Commander yet; Gabriel’s retaining the title for now, while Jesse’s onboarded by Ana. Unofficially, he’s got the office.

“Gabriel’s a better boss when he’s further away,” Jesse says.

Jack says, “Oh, God, just call me if he’s too much,” and Jesse says yes, sir.

He’s not flourishing, Jack thinks, but he’s managing. He’s McCree. He’s adaptable.

When he hangs up the phone with the both of them, Gabriel’s waiting there with keys in his hands.

“Come on,” Gabriel says. “There’s an old car show or some shit down the road. Sounds like something your country ass would be into.”

Jack breathes, and it’s easy.

*

At night Jack’s hands find Gabriel’s chest; he pulls him up to his knees, leans over the expanse of his back. _ I love you_, he says, and Gabriel’s always flushed red when he says it back, but he says it back, _ I love you too, _ and Jack wraps his arm around his waist and they move, unhurried, in the dark.

*

A month and two weeks after arriving in Los Angeles, Jack says, “I want to go to the beach.”

Gabriel doesn’t say no, but he hesitates. He shifts from foot to foot.

“Okay,” he says, because he always says _ okay _ to Jack these days, so much so that Jack’s started forcing him to say no once in a while. “Now?”

Jack considers it.

“Now,” he says.

The drive is quiet. Jack presses his forehead against the window; Gabriel puts his fingers in the tiny finger impressions of his steering wheel.

The beach Gabriel chose is empty. Jack wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a private beach, something he bought months or years ago, just to have it. It’d be like Gabriel Reyes to own a piece of the sea.

They park and walk down through the sand barefoot. It burns between Jack’s toes; he breathes out a sigh of relief when they hit the cold sand of high tide.

Gabriel stands there, staring out at the water’s edge. Jack glances back at him.

Jack strips off his shirt. His shorts. He leaves on just his boxers, and Gabriel silently picks up the rest of his clothes off the ground, shakes the sand out of them, as Jack walks forward.

When his feet hit the water he hisses with the cold, but he keeps walking. Slow, deliberate. Up to his knees. His thighs. To his waist, and then he turns around.

Gabriel’s a little dot on the shore, standing still holding Jack’s clothes. Behind him, the city. Behind that, the curve of the horizon.

Jack plummets under the water.

He stays there. One. Two. Three.

He pops back out, and gasps, and throws his head back to shake out the sea.

He does it again. And again. Til the salt starts to burn his eyes, and his mouth tastes like sand, and most of all, til he starts to get bored.

He shakes his head out like a dog, and he starts to walk back. Trudging through the uneven ocean floor, towards Gabriel still standing there, his head tilted to one side like he does when he’s analyzing. Calculating.

When Jack gets up to him, he holds his arms out for his clothes.

“No,” Gabriel says, “you’re gonna get my car all wet. Sit down for a while, dumbass.”

So they sit. They watch the sea creeping up to reach them. Gabriel wraps an arm around Jack, even though he’s dripping wet, and he doesn’t let go.

When Gabriel’s satisfied, they climb back in the car.

They go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so very much for reading through with me! 
> 
> [This message will soon be replaced by a link to a twitter thread of some behind the scenes non-Jack-POV content]. In the meantime if you have questions about anyone else in the story please ask them, this thing is much bigger in my head than what's written down, but!!! Only so much fits!
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter [@besselfcn](https://twitter.com/besselfcn).


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